invicta2012

Wot no Scharnhorst '05? Blucher? Deutschland / Lutzow? That's a IV / V / VI. I'd like an Emden '25 as a Tier V CL.... and possibly some variation on the Spahkreuzer designs for the higher tiers? A sort of counter to the large DDs we've had a lot of.

I find them frustrating. Japanese 127mm HE seems more effective, the French have much better DPM and AP capability, the Russian AP hits harder. Gun arrangement and performance is one of the things I find very frustrating about KM DDs.

T-61 is small and nimble and has fast reloading torps, Z-39 is big and chunky and handles like a Double Decker bus. Zedders also has disappointing guns and you want to avoid getting into gunfights with almost anyone, as she lacks alpha, penetration, reload speed ....

It's a bit like Civilization.... IN SPACE!!!!!!

Because people spent doubloons on Free XP to skip lines, and they spend cash on Premium ships to have a better experience or to train for silver ship grinding.

I had exactly the same problem. I bought Monaghan because she offers two set ups - one range-torpedo focused, one gunboat similar to Farragut - and worked with both. Once I'd got the hang of this ship I was comfortable enough to go back to the main American DD line and found that I really enjoyed Mahan. This was a good investment as the higher Tier PA DDs are also all American designed and play in a very similar way, so skills learnt on Monaghan helped me make progress on two lines. Sims, btw, is a very fun boat but also very different to other DDs. T-61 is also very good and money spent there won't be wasted. But it's not a "typical" German destroyer. For that experience, you want Z-39, which is also available to rent.

Thanks for the correction. I know it was added intentionally, but the feature was unpopular, and WG staff said that they were thinking of reverting it back. I can't remember whether they actually did... it might have slipped down the priority list. Edit: just seen @ForlornSailor's post above, so all good. Thanks!

If only they had a better flooding chance. 4k damage per torpedo (Vasteras on Bismarck)... and Bizzie's secondary range is nearly as far as my main battery!

There are that many ships, maps and player types to make Random games a right flamin' mess. Even when you lower the number of permutations - like a Ranked Sprint - it's very rare to find a consistent approach being formed from a randomly generated team when there is no consensus over the right approach to take. I wish that was true. But the quality of game play (and my own experience) suggests otherwise. I don't think that people learn very much from repeated, unexplained failure.

Not from the current Armory rentals, no.

Think about what you're saying. How can Random battles be used as an example of learning through repetition? By design the teams are randomly selected, consist of different ships, different players, and while the MM tries to add some continuity the situation is completely dissimilar to an Operation. In Ops, while there may be variations in enemy ships and their position, they generally spawn at the same time, in the same place, and do the same things. If a player fails, for example, in Narai while taking on the Nicholas that's covering the transport ships, they can load into the game again and have another go at the same situation, knowing where that enemy ship will be and pretty much what it will do. That's a training room scenario. If the point is that Random battles are also dependent on team work then I'd agree, but it's so much harder to get random unconnected players to work as a unit when the scenario is different every time.

I was wondering about that....if no-one has line of sight on you from any angle you can fire without being detected. Did they ever change the gun bloom rules back to the original or is it still 30 seconds after firing?

Operations depend on team work and on players knowing how to use their ships. It's difficult for players to be carried in these modes. The repetitive nature of the game also allows people to try things out and develop an understanding of game mechanics work. Learning through repetition is, of course, a well established method of teaching and much more efficient than expecting people to discern patterns from random events. Well, the move to increase rewards for 1-3 star completions could be read as compensation for the pathing issues. Fixing AI is not easy, especially if the people who wrote the original code didn't document things properly. Other games I play have terrible issue with this - they refer to it as "spaghetti code" - and whole game features have been closed down simply because no-one knows how to maintain it.

This is true, but it's probably going to take a while. There is only one mission in Phase 1 you can complete in Co-op without a Tier VIII European DD, and you need to complete that seven times to unlock the final task. So, splash the Free XP, ladies and gents!

Ha ha. The Lancaster bomber on the back was a giveaway.

I didn't notice anything much amiss today, I have to say. An Aegis run in Devonshire was still generating 3k XP, and yes that was with premium/permacamo, but that's fine....

It is very possible. RNG is involved but this looks explainable. The Omaha class is very lightly armoured and Izmail has very strong guns. The Izmail's AP shells have "overmatched" your bow armour - any AP shell with a calibre 14.3 times greater than the armour thickness simply ignores that layer of armour - and the AP shells carried on and hit your citadel plating athwartship. At that range, AP penetration is very strong and 37mm worth of armour will not save you - you will take lots of citadel hits, resulting in a Dev Strike. With regards to Bayern and the Devonshire - by the looks of it you hit his stern. Many cruisers - and especially RN ones - have a "box" citadel and long bow and stern areas where there's' nothing vital to hit. Your AP shells probably overpenetrated and did 10% of their maximum damage, and he got his torpedoes away.

Online irony is a bit like a car in the 1900s. It needs a man walking in front of it with a red flag which says "Warning, Online Irony incoming", otherwise it's difficult to see what it actually is. I'm not sure how badly WG have nerfed Operations but if this is some kind of attempt to get people to Come Back To Randoms they're going to have to try harder than that, and - perhaps - do something to improve the ship random experience.

Mainz, I think. There's a Hipper worth of armour under that hull, whereas Bayard is a bit squishy.

They are part of the discussion which you entered....as I said, campaign captains are normally the higher value unique ones such as Halsey and Yamamoto, not the "normal" unique ones such as Sansonetti and Cunningham. It's disappointing, after two events in which the unique commanders relevant to the new ship line were generally available from the outset, to find one being gated. I'll have moved on. There will be other lines to play. Campaigns are a good thing for games where there are infrequent content updates and players need reasons to keep on playing. You can hardly say that about WoWs - we're getting a new ship line every two months or so, at the moment, which is ten new ships, plus premiums, plus event ships, to play and enjoy (which I do). What I'm saying here, is "I liked the previous events, I don't like the changes they've made for this one". WG wanted to do something new - I can respect that, but I don't care for the outcome.

Let me make it as simple as I can for you. i) It is locked behind Random games and Tier VIII - X Ships, neither of which applied to the recent Sansonetti or Cunningham commanders. So it's a downgrade. ii) The commander is not as useful as Halsey, Yamamoto or Lutjens, neither in number of points available when unlocked or in number of ships it can be deployed on. So you get less for completing this campaign that you did with other ones. iii) The commander would be useful for the line of European ships that I want to play today, but... iv) ...getting it involves playing a whole bunch of other ships I don't want to play at the moment, or spending a load of Free XP on unlocking the European Tier VIII. Or spending doubloons on silly random bundles, I suppose. This is the sort of "pay to progress" stuff that annoys me. I don't have a problem with Campaigns. But when it comes to events and new lines, I like to have all the useful things available to grind in that event window, as we've had with the Italian and British cruisers, not shoved away down some sidequest alley. It motivates me to play (and spend) more. I'm not getting the pitchforks out, but to me, this is a less enjoyable way of doing things.

Well, the French only get really speedy at Tier VIII. Romulus is a laugh. As is Tatra. Not so sure about Klas Horn, she's not really a finisher. Takes ages to sink anything!

It is to me, I suppose. I don't have that many and I don't play them that much. It's no great problem to ignore it like I've ignored all the other campaigns. I suppose I'd like to make the point to WG that this is a new line where I'm short of captains, so getting a boon to levelling when the line is new and I'm keen to play is more attractive now than in three months time. And yes, it would be an ideal captain to put in the Orkan, but both will have to wait, I suppose.

It's a hybrid. You wiggle like a Brit DD, plan an exit like you're a French DD, and don't play like most people in a Japanese DD and forget you have guns, because they're essential. Those fires you set are vital in a ship where it takes 6-8 torpedo hits to sink a cruiser, let alone a BB.

Well, perhaps you could send him a spreadsheet of something. The thing is.... I don't want a specialist European destroyer captain in a couple of months when I'm probably heartily sick of everything Swedish. I'd like to be able unlock him now, when I can make good use in levelling ships, especially as this is quite a "sticky" line, a bit tiresome to play. Campaign captains should be in the Halsey/Yamamoto mould where you get a real boon that you can use across a major spread of Tech Tree ships.